Sarmiento said the couple told her that her working conditions would be the same as in Hong Kong, where she had two days off a week and regular hours, and that she would become a permanent resident in Canada after two years.

Sarmiento said that unlike in Canada, she was also allowed to socialize with other people, had her own cell phone to make frequent calls to the Philippines and took the children under her care out of the home on her own.

But all that changed when she arrived in Canada, where she was forced to work 16-hour days, seven days a week and also clean the house.

“When they see that the (other) nannies are talking to me, Mr. Orr would approach me and he would tell me there’s no need for you to talk to the nannies,” she said, describing her past experiences visiting a local community centre.

Johns pay somewhere between $100 and $150 for an hour-long “girlfriend experience.” If they are lucky, the girls will get a 10 percent cut of the profits.

From the Chinese head tax in the days of the British Columbian gold rush (look it up, it’s fucked) right down to the Filipino chap who holds an architecture degree from back home but now flips your cheeseburger for minimum wage in Montreal, Canada has a long and illustrious history of fucking Asian immigrants right in the ass upon their arrival to the Great White North. In no industry does this happen more literally than in prostitution, and right now women are pouring into Canada from all over Asia like, um, the choicest and most delicate plum wine being dumped into a scummy beer barrel at a logging camp in the Yukon.

One might think that in the 21st century, a wealthy liberal democracy would be able to squash its tendency to subjugate newcomers fresh off the boat. But unfortunately for a nation that prides itself on once having been a safe haven for African slaves, the rhetoric of social progress doesn’t hold up against reality—Canada has become a major transit point for a booming $10 billion a year human-trafficking industry.

The Mounties (Canada’s horsey-riding version of the FBI) have made conservative estimates that around 2,000 women and girls are illegally trafficked into Canada each year, but the reality is probably closer to around 10,000. From countryside rice patties to inner-city slums and then all the way to the freshly vacuumed arrival lounge of the Vancouver airport, traffickers use a deftly engineered system of exploitation to covertly import Asian girls into the North American sex market.

Three teenagers have denied forcing other girls as young as 13 into prostitution in Ottawa.

Police say the girls, who were 15 and 16 years old when they were arrested last summer, operated a prostitution ring in the Canadian capital without adult guidance.

They allegedly used social media sites such as Facebook to lure victims to a house, where they were abducted and offered to adult clients.

The teenagers, who are charged with 74 offences, including human trafficking, forcible confinement and sexual assault, as well as making and distributing child pornography, appeared in court on Monday.

The court was told they encouraged or forced girls to take drugs before telling them they would become escorts.

It was claimed that if they refused, they were threatened with violence and blackmail.

One girl was allegedly forced kicking and screaming into a man’s car at a petrol station. The court heard she escaped but was quickly caught and dragged back.

Another alleged victim was dropped off by her mother at the house of one of the accused, only to return home the next day wearing makeup, high heels and a coat that did not belong to her.

Prosecutors said one of the accused would send photographs of a new recruit to prospective clients from her mobile phone.

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As it transpired, Brian, in his role as a Mountie, had tracked a Canadian paedophile to Cambodia. When he saw what was going on there with children being sold into prostitution he set out to do something about it.

Tim said: “He set up the group Ratanak and that’s what he was speaking in the church about.

“I spoke to him and also got involved with the group. That’s how my photography project in Cambodia came about.”

Tim continued: “I got married on October 21. We spent a week on honeymoon in Cambodia then the second week was spent visiting Ratanak projects. I went back again to take photographs of young girls who had been rescued from trafficking and Deborah, who is a psychiatrist returned to help some of the counsellors.

“Human trafficking is not just something that happens on the other side of the world. There are groups here in Northern Ireland and closer to home in Craigavon who are working to stop human trafficking.”

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The fast-moving, episodic play features a Canadian lawyer working undercover to expose a human trafficking ring based in Thailand. To win his case, Jason (Kennedy) must convince his key witness, a young prostitute known only as Number 18 (Chew), to risk her life and testify.

In partnership with Raise Their Voice, Burnt Thicket Theatre has presented She Has A Name in 13 cities and seven provinces across Canada.

“She Has a Name is a powerful piece of theatre that both thrilled and inspired audiences during our successful world premiere,” said director Stephen Waldschmidt. “We look forward to bringing this timely story to thousands more Canadians from Halifax to Victoria.”

“The play will open the eyes of Canadians to the reality that there are millions of innocent victims in the world today who live in these brutal conditions,” added Mark Wollenberg, the Western Canadian representative of International Justice Mission Canada, an agency that works overseas to secure justice for victims of human trafficking.

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No one knows how many girls and women are brought from city to city, province to province, to work at strip clubs, escort agencies and massage parlours around the country.

Theirs is a hidden trade and since most victims are too afraid to come forward, it will remain hidden.

Among the few cases in Montreal to be prosecuted since human trafficking became a crime in 2004 was that of Jacques Leonard-St. Vil, who in January 2007 brought a 17-year-old girl with him from Montreal to Mississauga, ostensibly to host promotional parties.

A month later, and under constant threat of violence, she was being sold for sex in clubs around the city six days a week.

Then, there was Michael Lennox Mark, who in 2008 pleaded guilty to trafficking a 17-year-old he had sold into street prostitution in Toronto. He also pleaded guilty to procuring three other girls.

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When Timea Nagy answered an ad in a Budapest newspaper, she thought she was coming to Toronto to work as a nanny for the summer.

Instead, when the 19-year-old was picked up by three burly men awaiting her at Pearson Airport, she was told she now owed $3,000 for her travel expenses and would have to pay them back by working as a stripper and sex worker. “I freaked out. I wanted to go home,” she recalled.

But that wasn’t an option. The men told her that if she didn’t pay off her debt to them, they’d kill her family back in Hungary.

The terrified young woman soon learned that she was not the only one who had been misled into the sex trade. Like her, hundreds were being brought into Canada from abroad under the temporary visa for exotic dancers which allowed owners to staff their clubs, with many of these girls not knowing what really awaited them. “They took me to this motel in Etobicoke and there were 130 women from Eastern Europe all in the same boat,” recalls Nagy, 35.

During her three months as their sex slave, she was raped and threatened with death until she finally managed to escape.

What’s this debate over Canada’s move to ban foreign strippers, escorts and massage-parlor workers really about? On one side, you have the Adult Entertainment Association, which is upset that the government is stripping away a pool of potential moneymaking workers, whereas on the other side, you have the government, which is saying that cutting back on human trafficking and exploitation is at the heart of the decision.

The Conservative Party government’s Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney, announced that starting next month, Canada will no longer renew visas for foreigners working as strippers. Already the government has cut back on how many new visas it grants, down to just 12 in 2011. But it had been continuing to renew previous visas. Not anymore.

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Police in Gatineau, Que., have arrested the third suspect in a human trafficking case where three teenage girls are accused in the prostitution of three other teenage girls in Ottawa.

The youth, 16, was apprehended Thursday at about 8 p.m. in Gatineau and returned to Ottawa, police said.

She appeared in an Ottawa courtroom Friday afternoon on charges of human trafficking, procuring for prostitution, forcible confinement, robbery, assault and uttering threats. She was then remanded back into custody.

Police said the three accused allegedly used social media to lure a trio of other girls, who are between 13 and 17 years old, to a home at a Walkley Road community housing project in southeast Ottawa. That is also where the accused live, neighbours said.